kidmercury

YouTube recently launched YouTube Remixer, which is the company's first step towards enabling video editing and mashups.

While it is still very early on in the video editing game, here are my thoughts on where I see this headed:

1. There are now three primary types of video professionals: video creators (people that make videos); video editors (people that mashup videos); and video publishers (people that republish videos).

2. Ads will be inserted into videos, and there must be an opportunity for all three of the aforementioned types of video professionals to earn advertising revenue.

3. From this perspective, YouTube's primary job is to serve as "the government of video"; the organization that determines how the ad pie will be shared.

For ad networks, online community governance is becoming a more important competence with each passing day. In light of this, I think we will eventually see online communities take on a political structure, with various user segments being able to participate in policy making. As the online communities grow, their political structure will increasingly collide with that of real governments. In this way, the virtual will challenge the real for control of society.